Bulgaria’s 2013 elections: Parallel count by Austrian firm shows GERB at 30.4%, socialists 26.1%
A parallel vote count of Bulgaria’s May 12 2013 parliamentary elections by Austrian firm SORA showed Boiko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party as having scored 30.4 per cent and Sergei Stanishev’s Bulgarian Socialist Party with 26.1 per cent.
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms had 11.2 per cent and Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalists Ataka 7.8 per cent.
These results, showing four parties entering the 42nd National Assembly, are broadly in line with those of most polling agencies’ estimates based on exit polls and their own parallel counting processes.
The Austrian firm was retained by parties who had telegraphed suspicions in advance about the integrity of the May 12 vote. The parallel count was agreed on by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Ataka, Meglena Kouneva’s Bulgaria for Citizens and the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria coalition. GERB was not invited to participate.
SORA said that GERB’s results showed a loss of nine per cent in comparison with the performance of Borissov’s party in the 2009 parliamentary elections. The socialists had gained 8.4 per cent, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms lost three per cent and Ataka had 1.6 per cent less than in 2009.
The Austrian firm’s projections were that, in the 240-seat National Assembly, GERB would have 96 seats, the BSP 83 seats, the MRF 36 seats and Ataka 25 seats.
The SORA figures were based on parallel counting from 203 electoral precincts, the firm said at about 1am on May 13.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
